I'm Not a Mourning Person: Braving Loss, Grief, and the Big Messy Emotions That Happen When Life Falls Apart

By Kris Carr

From New York Times bestselling author Kris Carr, comes a transformational book about love, loss, and all the life-changing insights we receive when we embrace them.

A few years ago, Kris Carr’s world was falling apart. Her father was dying, she had to pivot her business because of the pandemic, and she was on the verge of reaching her twenty-year milestone of living with an incurable Stage IV cancer diagnosis.

While sitting in a CVS parking lot, she broke down, finally allowing herself to feel the massive stress and sadness she had been suppressing in order to seem strong for those around her, and for herself.

And then she asked herself, “If embracing my intense emotions helped me feel even the slightest bit better, why was I so determined to avoid them? And given how all-encompassing this hint of catharsis felt, where else in my life have I been avoiding grief?”

In this book, Kris shares her (embarrassing, painful, helpful, hilarious, and sometimes inappropriate) stories and observations about what to expect when you’re not expecting your world to fall apart.

If your life has been turned upside down—whether it be the dissolving of a relationship or marriage, the end of a job or career, any other number of significant unexpected transitions. . . or, like Kris, you are wrestling with the pain that comes from an illness or the death of a loved one, this book is filled with real-life experiences, practices, and insights that can help you feel better—not cured—but better.

It will provide comfort and community as you learn that these big messy emotions can be a catalyst to take inventory of your life, figure out what matters most, and reset. . . because as Kris says, “when we’re brave enough to tend to our hearts: Our messy emotions can teach us how to be free––not free from pain, but free from the fear of pain and the barrier it creates to fully living.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hay House LLC
• Release date: Sep 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9781401970079

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Never Let Them See You Grieve

Only cry in the shower. No one will see you, and you won’t wreck your mascara.

This bit of wisdom was given to me by a family friend when my father was dying.

At the time, overwhelmed by emotion and desperately trying to maintain some semblance of control, I thought it was a brilliant tip. Not only did I attempt to follow this guideline—I also added a few of my own. Things like: Stuff yourself into the nearest closet and scream into a pillow (or any dense fabric that muffles agony). Dig your nails into your palms so the physical pain overrides your emotional distress. Think gruesome thoughts to distract yourself from your grueling feelings. These strategies worked for a while, until my pent-up sorrow took on a life of its own, refusing to abide by any rules.

I remember the exact moment the dam broke. My dad had just received news that his cancer was progressing and there were no more treatment options. Numb from the arresting prognosis, I walked through the aisles of my local drugstore, having offered to run an errand to pick up more Ensure—the only nourishment he could stomach. I stood frozen, staring at the chocolate-flavored protein drinks, incapable of deciding how many to buy. Will he live long enough for a case, or should I just stick to the four-packs?

That question hit me hard. An emotional tsunami was about to unleash itself on me and all the innocent shoppers in my immediate vicinity.

Shit! Here come my feelings. And no shower in sight. I blinked heavily through the checkout line, fighting back the deluge of tears that were mere seconds away, until I was able to rush to the safety of my car and sob uncontrollably. Let me tell you: the parking lot at CVS is no shower stall. My once-compartmentalized grief was now on full display. Hunched over my steering wheel in a teary puddle, I happened to notice an older woman, probably coming to fetch a prescription or buy toilet paper, glancing my way. She could plainly see what I’d been so desperate to hide: I was a full-blown mess.

After the remains of my mascara finished streaming down my face, I felt a sense of relief similar to when medicine kicks in, giving you a break from a hallucinogenic fever. I’d somehow overlooked how cleansing it could be to let my feelings rip. After this happened a few more times (shout-out to Home Depot and their decision to pipe Michael Bolton’s How Am I Supposed to Live Without You? through their stereo system), I’d started to realize that these breaks helped me survive. They made me realize that the only way through my sadness was to allow the waves of big feelings to move through my body—something I’d been hell-bent on avoiding, for fear I would drown.

If embracing my intense emotions helped me feel even the slightest bit better, why had I been so determined to avoid them? And given how all-encompassing these hints of catharsis felt, I couldn’t help but wonder, Where else in my life have I been avoiding grief? Did that avoidance have anything to do with the strange existential angst that had been creeping up on me over the last few years, where I sensed that I was not, in fact, living as fully as I could be?

The more I thought about it, the instinct to avoid grief made perfect sense to me. As well-meaning as my family friend’s advice was, Keep that mascara intact, honey was not going to help me heed my soul’s call to grow. For that, I would need to surrender to my grief and other big emotions.

GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION TO FEEL

While we may not want to even think about grief, loss, or unexpected (and unwanted) change, in order to feel less alone, less broken, less crazy (you’re not!), we need to talk about and tend to our most tender feelings. We also need to find the right kind of support for our emotions and ourselves in the process. Only then will we be able to pick up the pieces of our shattered hearts and lives and put ourselves back together. Only then can we heal. That is what this book is all about: learning how to be a Mourning Person when we’d rather stay under the covers and go back to sleep.

That said, I’m not going to sugarcoat it: grief sucks—and it isn’t a solo flier. Grief rolls with an entourage of complicated friends, who all demand bottle service at the club—emotions like weariness, judgment, shame, jealousy, self-loathing, and all the other not-so-glamorous feelings we don’t want people to know we’re experiencing.

This is to be expected, and so is the lengthy amount of time it takes to feel like a human being who wants to get out of pajamas as a complete wardrobe and wash her hair again. That’s because grief isn’t linear. It will work us over in whatever way it wants, and on its own damn schedule. We can’t just snap our fingers and be done with the devastation. We also can’t amputate any of our emotions and expect to be whole. Believe me, I’ve tried.

For most of my life, I’ve done everything in my power to run from the big, scary feelings explored in this book—the socially unacceptable emotions that we’re not supposed to feel, like rage, powerlessness, and utter despair. But a few years ago, when my father was dying, my world was falling apart, and I was on the verge of reaching my 20-year milestone of living with my own shit pickle—a stage IV cancer diagnosis (yup, it’s not gone, neat, or tidy)—I suddenly lost the energy to run. So I decided to try something different: I stopped and faced my feelings.

Eager to find a framework that resonated, I began researching how grief and other difficult emotions affect our brains, bodies, and lives—even when we’re unaware of it. Could understanding these big kahunas help me understand myself and others better? Could accepting grief as a part of me that needed to be cared for—just like my skin or heart or the dozens of tumors that I’ve learned to coexist with—help me feel even the slightest bit whole again? I didn’t know, but I needed to try.

So, I slowly and gently started applying the practices, insights, and therapies I was discovering to my own pain, and over time, I eventually began to feel better—not cured, but better. Which is exactly what can happen for you.

Let’s be honest: feelings are slippery little suckers. When we deny them, they get pissed off and come out in other, more destructive ways. Uncared for pain can morph into anger, violence, addiction, anxiety, hypervigilance, hyperdrive, guilt, procrastination, hopelessness, and, of course, the consuming of copious amounts of wine. It shrinks our worlds and makes us feel stuck—at home, at work, in our bodies, in our relationships, and in our hearts.

Burying pain can also make us sick or, at the very least, constipated.

But here’s what can happen when we’re brave enough to take care of our hearts: our messy emotions can teach us how to be free—not free from pain but free from the fear of pain and the barrier it creates to fully living.

As trauma specialist Robert Stolorow points out, our feelings, no matter what they are, long for a home. Creating that home, a place where all parts of us are welcome, is how we heal. Grief, loss, and pain beg for a safe place to be seen and heard. They ask us to be vulnerable, which is the last thing we want to do when we’re in agony. But if we’re brave enough to let our various griefs do their therapeutic work, they will grow and mend us in ways we can’t begin to imagine (yet).

And when it comes to healing, there’s a bigger picture at play. Humans are interconnected beings, different but bound by our shared experience of being alive. As such, our healing can have a ripple effect on others, too. As we forgive, and unlock and release our pain, we create an opening for others to do the same. But it doesn’t stop there. Our healing even has the power to contribute to the healing of ancestral wounds carried down the genetic line. Yet another reason this work is so important.

Grief cracks you open and teaches you priceless, heartexpanding, and healing lessons, too. It certainly has done that for me. It can be used as a catalyst to take inventory of your life, figure out what matters most versus what you can let go of, and allow you to reset, breathing into the next phase of brave, courageous, and utterly unique you.

YOU ARE NOT ALONE

Since the onset of the pandemic, the grief, shock, depression, and trauma of the last few years have been astounding. For many of us, this disorientation has prompted some deep soul-searching. Everywhere people are reassessing their values and priorities as a result of losses that will affect us for generations to come.

Because of what we’ve all been through, we may be more likely to consider the person we walk by in the grocery store, who, like us, might be quietly carrying the burden of their own pain. Loss is the one thing we all have in common.

We’ll get dumped or do the dumping, we’ll quit or get fired, we’ll lose our connection to self and wonder why we’re here in the first place, and we’ll get sick and better and sick again. Our hearts will shatter and swell with fullness. And our resilience is the only thing that allows us to be brave enough to continue loving.

Our mere existence requires us to strengthen our heart muscle through the back-and-forth of love and loss—two experiences that may feel like polar opposites but are actually two sides of the same coin. You can’t have one without the other.

The kind of love I’m talking about here is messy and honest. It guides us when we have the courage to follow it. It asks us to do very beautiful and difficult things, like stand up for someone else, or ourselves, or choose what feels right instead of what looks good.

The fierceness of this love invites us to heal old wounds that keep playing out in our day-to-day lives. And most of all, it reminds us that mortality is its price of admission. This kind of love never dies, even when chapters in our lives close or relationships end.

Now, if someone had said this stuff to me before my dad died, I might have wanted to believe it, while also thinking, Suuuure. So, if you’re having a similar response, I get it. But please hear me out. Putting love at the center of our lives helps us manage our grief and move forward—not move on but move forward. Not forgetting the person, job, or relationship, but learning how to live without them.

While life will never be the same after whatever loss you’re grappling with, it’s still worth putting yourself out there and living and loving fully. Not because your person would want you to (while likely true, no one wants to hear that) and not because God doesn’t give you more than you can handle (seriously, WTF?), but because life is beautiful. And you deserve to bask in that beauty before your own eventual dirt nap—which can sneak up on you real fast—so you might as well get busy living.

LEARNING AND LIVING THROUGH OUR STORIES

Surrendering to our big messy feelings makes us vulnerable, so the following pages naturally contain many of my embarrassing, painful, helpful, hilarious, and inappropriate stories and observations from the trenches of love and loss. If you’ve ever freaked out in a random parking lot, you are not alone.

Just as my story is my medicine, so, too, is yours. And while you may see parts of yourself in my journey, you won’t find a specific blueprint here. That’s because this journey is unique and deeply personal. There is no universal map, but there are common themes, emotional experiences, and useful ideas we’ll explore together.

I’ve also interwoven helpful practices throughout. In some chapters I include a Caring for . . . section with additional tips and tools at the end of the chapter. In others, the bulk of the guidance is woven into the narrative. Either way, this book is filled with research and recommendations on what to expect when you’re not expecting your world to fall apart.

With more and more evidence connecting the dots between our emotional and physical health, it’s increasingly clear how important it is to do this work.

My hope is that this book can be a source of comfort for anyone suffering from a loss—whether it be the dissolving of a relationship or marriage, the end of a job or career, or any number of other significant unexpected transitions. But especially for those wrestling with that pain that comes from an illness or the death of a loved one.

All that said, I hate that we have to do this. I’d much rather watch our favorite Netflix series or make paninis or go shopping for new throw pillows, but here we are. The truth is, you wouldn’t be holding this book (and I wouldn’t have written it) if life didn’t kick us in the choppers. We’d be on a beach somewhere sipping a colada. And we’ll likely do that again, but first, we’ve got some heart-tending to do together.

So, I invite you to be my co-pilot on this healing trip as we tour some of the most difficult and treasured parts of life: grieving and loving, stumbling and flying, living and dying. I’ll bring the snacks, flashlights, and bandages. You bring the sensible shoes.

Ready? Let’s go.

CHAPTER 1

I’M NOT OK

Our pain carves out a larger space for love to fill.

— KHALIL GIBRAN

Days before my dad got on the bus—his euphemism for dying—I peeked into his bedroom. Did he need another blanket or some ice chips? Were the lights too bright? Was there anything I could do to make him more comfortable? That’s when I overheard him steadying and calming himself with a mantra. His voice was reduced to a raspy, faint whisper, but his words held the power to stick with me forever.

It will be OK. I will be OK. It will be OK.

Eyes closed. Hands gently folded on his heart. Deep breaths.

It will be OK. I will be OK. It will be OK.

Witnessing him trying to comfort himself stopped me in my tracks. Dad had spent his entire life making sure everyone else was OK. Did you need a little extra pocket money? A ride somewhere? A shoulder to cry on or a few wise words to help you make an important decision? He was the go-to guy. I’d seen his caregiver instincts in action with so many of our family and friends. In the awkward or painful moments of life, he was that guy, the one unafraid to pull someone aside and say, What’s doin’? You OK?

A nurturer to many, here he was, in the twilight of his life, nurturing himself. It’s hard to explain the swell of emotions I felt—pride (My dad is amazing!), heartache (How could our time together have come to this?), and genuine appreciation (he was a teacher until the very end—and beyond). I’ve since learned that it’s not uncommon to witness the powerful instincts that take over when people are knocking on heaven’s door. The human spirit knows what to do. I was humbled to witness this in Dad.

My father was in the hospice phase of his battle with stage IV pancreatic cancer. His final wish was to die at home, which my mom and I, with steadfast support from my husband, Brian, had worked to honor, arranging for hospice nurses, medical equipment and support, and meal trains. Surrounded by family and his beloved dogs, Jack and Ella, his final days were full of life-on-pause moments like this one, deeply serene and sacred.

Until the jackhammers kicked in. Literally.

When I ripped open the curtains, I saw an entire wrecking crew tearing up a concrete pool in my parents’ neighbor’s backyard.

Are you fucking kidding me?

As far as I was concerned, Dad could go any minute now. His nurses had basically said as much, alerting us to expect the unexpected, which is something we were already growing used to. His once-flush complexion was now a constant state of pale. His previously athletic body had withered down to nearly half his regular body weight. Seemingly overnight, he’d started retaining fluid in his abdomen, something the lean golfer in him would have hated in normal times. For the physical changes alone, death by cancer can be a mindfuck. Patients can go from bad to actively dying in the blink of an eye. Whatever happened, I was not about to let him leave this planet listening to the earsplitting sounds of a piston hitting a striker plate up to 1,800 times per minute.

If you’ve ever watched as a loved one gets ready to leave this world, you can understand the ferocious mama bear instincts that instantly took over me. Dad does not need construction right now. He needs Enya! (Or maybe I needed Enya.)

His pain had risen to levels that required round-the-clock morphine. Though I couldn’t experience his physical agony firsthand, his pain sure felt like my pain every time I heard him groan. In the coming days, he would no longer be able to communicate with us. His language would go from a few words to hand squeezes to nothing. Step-by-step, he walked closer to his transition. I watched helplessly as Dad straddled an unfamiliar divide between holding on and completely letting go of